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From: the Voice of America

How to Kill a Palestinian

by Elias Akleh

Media Monitors Network – CA,USA

(Tuesday, January 27, 2009)

“Media centers were particularly targeted. Local and international news reporters were prevented from entering Gaza. Those, who were able to enter, were directly targeted. The Al-Shuruq office tower housing several international and Arab media outlets was directly hit. Two cameramen working for Abu Dhabi TV were injured, while the offices of Reuters News Agency, Fox TV, Sky, and Al-Arabiya TV offices were damaged. Another raid had damaged the headquarter offices of Al-Resala newspaper.”

Commenting on the latest Israeli one-directional onslaught against the Palestinians of Gaza Strip, the Israeli 10th TV channel has disclosed that the Israeli genocidal forces had used half of its air force and had launched at least 2500 air raids against Gaza Strip. The television military correspondent stated that the Israeli warplanes had dropped more than a thousand tons of explosives, including white phosphorous and DIME (Dense Inert Metal Explosive) bombs, during three weeks on the virtually unarmed densely populated 360 square Kilometers Strip. He added that the shells fired by tanks, artillery, gunboats, and infantry were not included in those fired by the air force.

After a whole week of continuous air bombardments Israel sent in its elite foot soldiers; 30,000 of them, and called in 10,000 of its reservists. Armed with the latest weapons of mass murder, covered with an umbrella of free reigning air force, and accompanied with raining shells of heavy artilleries, they drove their tanks into the civilian towns murdering civilians and destroying every structure in their path.

Living outside of Gaza one cannot fully understand the barbarity of this genocide especially when the Western media had barely covered any of its atrocity. To gain a slight idea of its enormity one should remember that, during the 6-days war of 1967, this same Israeli army was distributed on four fronts; Egyptian, Jordanian, Syrian, and Lebanese, and it was fighting regular armies. Now the whole brunt of this army is concentrated on a small strip against unarmed and untrained civilian population.

Latest official count was 1350 murdered, 40% of them were children, and 5300 were injured; mutilated and amputated. It was reported that 80% of the injured were the victims of burning phosphorous bombs. More dead are being discovered under the rebels, and many seriously injured are expected later on to die.

Israeli tanks had left several city blocks completely destroyed without any homes or structure standing. The tanks shelled homes and apartment towers. Due to the small size of Gaza Strip Palestinians had to build vertically. Many apartment towers went up 15-20 stories high with each story containing 6-8 apartments. A total of 20,000 buildings were completely or partially burnt and damaged. The UN has reported that more than 50,000 Palestinians are left homeless and are now crowded into 50 emergency shelters. An estimated of 50,000 more are living with relatives and in tents they erected on the ruins of their homes.

The Israeli bombardment targeted everything in Gaza including government buildings, police headquarters, banks and business offices, the main university, 67 schools sheltering civilians, shopping centers and market places, factories, water, sewer, and electricity infrastructures, private homes and apartment towers and charity organizations. Farms, including their animals, were also targeted and hundreds of acres of crops and fruit groves were incinerated. Religious buildings, where civilians usually seek shelter, were specifically targeted. Israeli fighter planes had completely destroyed 41 mosques, and partially damaged 51 others. One church was also targeted. Even cemeteries were not spared; 5 of them were bombed.

Although the Israeli army was given the exact GPS co-ordinates of every UN structure, as asserted by Christopher Gunness, the UNRWA spokesman, Israeli F-16 planes had repeatedly dropped phosphorous bombed on UN schools knowing very well that hundreds of civilians had taken shelter there. At least 45 children and women were burnt and murdered there.

The UN headquarters in Gaza City was also hit with three, not just one, phosphorous bombs burning tons of humanitarian aid and food stuff. The fire kept on burning for three days. UN-flagged humanitarian convoy was also shelled killing one driver.

Medical centers and paramedics were not spared. The Red Crescent Al-Quds hospital in Tal el-Hawa neighborhood was hit by Israeli shells and caught on fire. Other two hospitals; Al-Wafa and Al-Fata hospitals, were also shelled, leading the World Health Organization to express its deep concern about the serious implications of such bombardments. 16 other smaller health clinics and 16 ambulances were also damaged. Medics were targeted and prevented from helping the injured. Ten of them, including two doctors, were murdered.

Media centers were particularly targeted. Local and international news reporters were prevented from entering Gaza. Those, who were able to enter, were directly targeted. The Al-Shuruq office tower housing several international and Arab media outlets was directly hit. Two cameramen working for Abu Dhabi TV were injured, while the offices of Reuters News Agency, Fox TV, Sky, and Al-Arabiya TV offices were damaged. Another raid had damaged the headquarter offices of Al-Resala newspaper.

Similar to all their previous wars, the Israeli soldiers committed massacres against Palestinian unarmed civilians. They have used internationally banned weapons such as phosphorous bombs, DIME, and depleted uranium, as reported by international physicians, eyewitnesses, and military experts. Israeli soldiers had mutilated the bodies of their victims to instill terror in the hearts of people hoping they will leave Gaza. Israeli soldiers herded many families in one building using them as human shield, and then later on bombed the building on top of them. They shot civilians, mainly children, directly and at point blank. The bodies of some children were found shot several times; as many as 18 bullets in the body of a 12 years old girl, and 12 bullets in the body of her 2 years old sister.

Israeli soldiers had wiped off whole Palestinian families. Al-Samuni family lost 11 members, Abu Aisha family lost 6, Batran family lost 6, al-Rayyan family lost 15 and al-Balousha family lost 5 sisters. Other families, too many to mention here, were either murdered or incinerated by the phosphorous bombs. The Israeli army has been carrying out a deliberate indiscriminate mass murder. During the first Intifada, 1987 – 1993, they murdered 1162 Palestinians. During the second Intifada, 2001- 2006, they murdered 5500 Palestinians. Now, in a short period of three weeks, they murdered 1350 Palestinians.

This onslaught is a holocaust since the many tons of phosphorous bombs, dropped on Gaza cities, had burnt civilians to the bones, burnt their homes and buildings, and burnt their fields and crops. This is the holocaust that the Israeli Deputy Defense Minister, Matan Vilnai, had threatened Palestinians with when he stated: “the more Qassam fire intensifies and the rockets reach a longer range, they will bring upon themselves a bigger shoah (holocaust) because we will use all our might to defend ourselves.”

One cannot help but wonder how could a group of people, who claim to be the victims of a holocaust, commit another holocaust against another nation. What is it that feeds, perpetuates and intensifies this Judaic genocidal spirit although all Arabs, including Palestinians, had offered these Zionist Jews many agreements of coexistence, peace and security? The answer comes through their media outlets, through the words of their scholarly educators, and through the teachings of their Rabbis.

“All of the Palestinians must be killed; men, women, infants, and even their beasts” cries the religious opinion of Rabbi Yisrael Rosen, the director of the long-established Tsomet Religious Institute. He wrote that Palestinians are like the nation of Amalekites, who attacked the Israelite tribes led by Moses on their way to Jerusalem. He stated that the Lord sent down in the Torah a ruling that allowed the Jews to kill the Amalekites, and that this ruling is known in Jewish jurisprudence.

The Torah states: “Annihilate the Amalekites from the beginning to the end. Kill them and wrest them from their possessions. Show them no mercy. Kill continuously, one after the other. Leave no child, plant, or tree. Kill their beasts, from camels to donkeys.” Rosen stated that Amalekites are not a particular race, but rather all those who hate and oppose the Jews; Christians and Muslims.

Many leading Israeli Rabbis support Rosen’s views. Israel’s former Sephardic Chief Rabbi Mordechai Eliyahu advocated carpet bombing of Gaza stating that “there is absolutely no moral prohibition against the indiscriminate killing of civilians during massive military offensive on Gaza” (The Jerusalem Post, 30 May, 2007). His son Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu amplified his father’s genocidal call stating: “if they don’t stop after we kill 100, then we must kill a thousand, then we must kill 10,000 and even a million”

Many Rabbis had argued that Palestinians in Gaza are not innocent civilians and that during war time it is not individuals but nations the Israelis are fighting. (It seems that Hitler had adopted this Telmudic teaching when he persecuted all European Jews)

Israeli educators, scholars, and politicians, openly, advocate the annihilation of all Palestinians. Dr. Nachum Rakover, a legal scholar, opined “They voted for killers and sent them to kill us. To call them (civilians) innocent is a tragic comedy… civilians are partners of the killers” Eli Yeshai, Israeli official in the Orthodox Shas party argued that “extermination of the enemy is sanctioned by the Torah” Many other politicians called for the need for “wiping off Gaza from the face of earth”, and “annihilating of every moving thing there.” The right-wing Israeli politician Avigdor Lieberman proposed nuking Gaza following the US example when it dropped the atomic bomb on Japan during WWII.

This “ideology of annihilation” is by no means a minority opinion in Israel, but represents a mainstream in the Jews of Israel as well as Jews in the West (US). The popular attitude is “if it was right by God to order us to commit genocide during Biblical time, why can’t it be right to commit genocide now. Has God changed his mind?” Indeed Judaic god is a racist genocidal god.

Watch and listen here to an example of how Israeli Jews are brainwashed and indoctrinated into the ideology of annihilation by their rabbis and scholars through Israeli media. Watch Max Blumenthal’s videotape of a group of messianic Orthodox Jewish Chabad-Lubavitch exhibit this ideology in NYC in January 11, 2009.

The Israeli spokesman, Nachman Abramovic demonized Palestinian children stating “They may look young to you, but these people are terrorists at heart. Don’t look at their deceptively innocent faces, try to think of the demons inside each of them … I am absolutely certain these people would grow to be evil terrorists if we allowed them to grow… would you allow them to grow to kill your children or finish them off right now? … honost and moral people ought to differentiate between true humans and human animals. We do kill human animals and we do so unapologetically. Besides who in the West is in a position to lecture us on killing human animals. After all, whose hands are clean?”

Human animal mentioned by Abramovic refers to the Judaic religious belief that Jews are Gods chosen people; the elite and the pure-blooded, while all others (non-Jews, Goyims, gentiles) are animal souls incarnated into human bodies to serve the Jews. Killing a human animal is just a sport like hunting deer or birds.

Another Israeli spokeswoman, Tzipora Menache, stated that she was not worried about negative ramifications the Israeli onslaught on Gaza might have on the way the Obama administration would view Israel. She said “You know very well, and the stupid Americans know equally well, that we control their government, irrespective of who sits in the White House. You see, I know it and you know it that no American president can be in a position to challenge us even if we do the unthinkable. What can they (Americans) do to us? We control congress, we control the media, we control show biz, and we control everything in America. In America you can criticize God, but you can’t criticize Israel.”

One of the militants who attacked a Jewish community center in the Indian city of Mumbai last November called local television during the assault to complain about Israel providing military support to India in the disputed region of Kashmir. Analysts say his complaint is one of several possible explanations of why terrorists attacked the center, known as Chabad House, alongside more high-profile targets in India’s commercial capital.

The interiors of Nariman House, Mumbai headquarters of the ultra-Orthodox Chabad Lubavitch movement, is seen after the commando operation in Mumbai, India, 29 Nov 2008

The Mumbai Chabad House is unlike the other sites targeted by terrorists who attacked the city in November.

The New York-based religious movement Chabad Lubavitch runs the Jewish community center in a Mumbai residential neighborhood. By contrast, the other targets included two five-star hotels and a major train station.

The attackers who stormed the Chabad House killed six people, four of them Israeli citizens, including the rabbi and his wife who ran the center. The first indication of why it was targeted comes from one of the attackers who seized the facility.

The man who gave his name as Imran Babar called India TV on day two of the assault and listed a series of grievances, including one about Israel’s army chief visiting Indian-controlled Kashmir last September.

Israeli army chief Avi Mizrahi went to the disputed region to advise India’s military about fighting militants loyal to Pakistan.

Indian officials say Babar and the other Mumbai attackers were members of Lashkar-e-Taiba, or L-e-T, a Pakistan-based militant group trying to drive Indian forces out of Indian-controlled Kashmir, a Muslim majority region.

Hagai Segal is a Lecturer in Near and Middle Eastern politics at the New York University in London. He says L-e-T strongly resents Israel’s military cooperation with India, which dates back to 1992, when the two countries established diplomatic relations.

“It is a very open and public relationship,” he said. “But of course it is obvious how and why that would be a problem from the perspective of groups like L-e-T and for all radical Islamists within India itself but also within Pakistan.”

Vijay Prashad, director of international studies at Trinity College in the U.S. city of Hartford, Connecticut says India is the world’s largest buyer of weapons from Israel.

But he says information about Israeli weapon sales and other military assistance to India is hard to find because both sides keep it quiet.

“There are arms sales – arms sales can be tracked. You can go to arms shows, you can see what India is buying,” said Prashad. “A lot of this stuff is available in government documents. But this counterterrorism relationship is very, very covert. It is a matter of just tracing who is traveling.”

Prashad says India’s then-Deputy Prime Minister L.K. Advani visited Israel while in office from 2002 to 2004 and spoke privately about how India could benefit from Israeli military expertise.

“There he laid out some of what he understood to be useful, for instance the building of the fence or wall on the Line of Control between India and Pakistan in Kashmir,” added Prashad. “He wanted to use some of Israel’s hi-technology devices – night goggles, sensory devices, things like that.”

But, Segal says terrorists have been overstating the closeness of the Israeli-Indian military relationship for propaganda purposes.

“The idea that Israel’s army is in Kashmir carrying out attacks or directly involved in command and control of the Indians is I think something we need to view with enormous cynicism,” he said.

Another possible motive for the attack on the Chabad House mentioned by Imran Babar in his TV interview is anger over Israel’s treatment of the Palestinians.

Indian media say the sole Mumbai terrorist captured alive, Mohammed Ajmal Kasab, also told police that his group wanted revenge for what he called Palestinian suffering at the hands of Israel.

Marvin Weinbaum of the Middle East Institute in Washington says L-e-T has adopted the Palestinian cause to show it is part of a broader Islamist holy war against Zionists and their allies.

He also says L-e-T is driven by a hatred of Jews, as demonstrated by the statements of its founder.

“Those remarks that Hafiz Saeed makes in his sermons – you call them anti-Semitic because he speaks about Jews, he does not just speak about Israel… so it is an attack on the Jewish religion,” said Weinbaum.

India says a Pakistan-based terrorist commander told one of the Chabad House gunmen in a phone call that killing the hostages would spoil the Israel-India relationship.

Israeli officials insist that will not be the case. They say Israel’s close ties with India in tourism, trade and defense will remain strong.

Florence, Italy – It’s no anti-Semitism, it’s all about personal feuds between the Florence Jewish community and the Lubavitch, a few ultra-orthodox Jews attending the Synagogue in Via Farini only sporadically.”

An authoritative member of the 1000-person Florence Jewish community explains the motives behind the finding of a small camping gas bottle Saturday January the 17th in front of the ‘Chabad House’ in via de’ Pilastri 48 (the place the Lubavitch have in every important city to host their followers). It is the Holocaust Remembrance Day and he wants to shed light on the episode. An anonymous source, whose words are nonetheless in agreement with the detectives working on the case about the bomb found during a Jewish sacred day. At first the sleuths had thought about an anti-Semitic act in relation with the bloody Israeli military operations in the Gaza Strip. The ‘bomb’ had a rudimental fuse, unable to let the gas explode. The hypothesis was plausible, almost obvious, but was soon abandoned to follow clues about a personal vendetta. A vendetta unleashed by somebody who had disputes with the ultra-orthodox Lubavitch. No one claimed to be the author of the action, something odd if there had been political motives.

The Florence Jewish environment is extremely fragile: two ways to think about and practice Judaism coexist. From one side almost all of the community, led by Joseph Levi, the rabbi of Synagogue in via Farini. From another side, the ‘Hassidim’, the most rigorous Jewish denomination: during the Shabbat they do not turn the lights on and they do not use the lift.

In 2000 Eli Borenstein, one of the most influential leaders of the Italian Lubavitch, bought an old shop to open the Chabad house (inside there is only some old stuff). The location is strategic to attract potential new ‘Hassidim’. Problems in the few yards between Via Farini and via de’ Pilastri soon arose. These Florence Jews are called ‘Lubavitch’ or ‘Lubavitcher’, a branch of Hassidism, borrowing their name and their ancient traditions from the old Russian town of Lubavitch, destroyed by the Nazis in 1941. Black coat, payot, and black hat: they come from all over the world to meet their leader Borenstein, who, however, lives in Bologna (where he received another ‘warning’) and goes to Florence only once a week (on Saturdays, that is) to host and cater for his followers.

The Shabbat is a sacred day when it’s prescribed not to walk for long, not to prepare food, and not to do many other things. There is even a rule about not using the telephone: it’s because of this that, curiously, Borenstein warned the Police only after dark, when Shabbat was over, even if he had seen the ‘bomb’ already during the morning. “We hope to live together peacefully, but to see the Lubavitch proselytize with the Jewish American tourists in front of the Synagogue doesn’t seem to be very good for the community”: this was reported in the Florence edition of ‘La Repubblica’ soon after the arrival of the Lubavitch in town. A dislike that soon degenerated into a conflict between the two groups: this however is only the background of the intimidation act of Jan. the 17th. It could have been the result of personal motives.

The above article appeared ‘Il Firenze’ a Florence newspaper on January the 28th.